


A Fine and Private Place

by Konstantya



Category: A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-20
Updated: 2009-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-13 19:26:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3393446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Konstantya/pseuds/Konstantya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the way to the guillotine, Carton reflects on his relationships with the fairer sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fine and Private Place

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published (on FF.net) on February 20, 2009. Cross-posted here on February 19, 2015.

 

Riding in the cart, through the throngs of people cheering and jeering in the streets, it occurs to him that he must have some sort of intrinsic weakness for Frenchwomen.

He figures it began during his years in the student quarter of Paris. He was a very young man back then, at the beginning of his third decade, full of ingenuity and promise, and would spend hours studying in the libraries—but even then, rarely got around to his own work. Instead he gave help to others, found research for other young men. His professors could never understand why—why he had no personal motivation for subjects he was obviously proficient in—and to be honest, neither could he. It was just the way things happened.

And one afternoon found him in one of the many libraries of Paris, turning the corner of a small, deserted reading room only to almost collide with a girl with dark blonde hair. He stuttered out apologies until he realized she wasn't offended, but was laughing quietly into her book, green eyes twinkling at him over the top. She lowered the book to reveal the rest of her face, and he couldn't help laughing back.

"You…are not French?" she eventually asked, after paying close attention to his speech.

"No," he answered, "English."

"La! English!" Her grin was positively mischievous, and it was only then that he realized she had been reading a translation of _The History of Tom Jones._ He hadn't read it himself, but its reputation was hard to avoid—and it was almost universally regarded as 'inappropriate for young ladies.'

"Are you enjoying it?" And he pointed at the book with a sly smile.

She laughed again, all wide pink lips and white teeth, and a blush crept onto her cheeks then. But before she could respond:

"Rachelle!" the name came tearing through the library, the unsettlingly familiar boom of a professor. The girl shoved the book onto a shelf, looked furtively behind her, seemed to deliberate for an instant, then grabbed his cravat and kissed him. It was over before he had time to register what was even going on. And with another grin and a "coming Papa!" she was gone.

He became something of a romantic after that, and walked the Paris streets hoping to see her, as if searching for a daydream—where they would attend balls, and ditch the dancing to surreptitiously drink punch and giggle behind a curtain; where he would read her Shakespeare and she would read him La Fontaine; where he would court her properly, if he could only find her.

And eventually, he _did_ find her. In a hat shop, her hand around the arm of some handsomer, richer gentleman (if his clothes were any indication), and gave him only a cool, cursory glance through the window before ignoring him completely.

Mentally kicking himself for his foolish infatuation, he drank a bottle of Bordeaux and spent the night telling Stryver, a classmate at the time, how to do his work. They became something like friends—possibly because Stryver was a little too boisterous and Carton a little too quiet, and perhaps together they hoped to even out. Upon return to London, they became something like business partners—because it was all-too easy for Carton to turn bad habits into an even-worse lifestyle. And so he spent the years as a second-rate lawyer, the brains behind, always behind, Stryver's mouth, drinking away his disappointment with himself, slowly losing grip on the rung of middle-class on the social ladder.

Until the case of Charles Darnay.

Lucie Manette came along as something entirely better than any professor's capricious daughter, but by then he had sunk too low to even consider courting her—had known she was far, far too good for him. Miss Manette, a bright ray of sunshine in his world that had steadily grown a darker and darker shade of grey. Miss Manette, who was French by birth and heritage, if not culture. Miss Manette, who became Mrs. Darnay, D'Aulnais, Evrémonde…

—"Down, Evrémonde!"

Though not his name, he reflexively looks toward the voice, and finds a familiar face standing beside it. Their eyes meet, one set impassive, the other set as embarrassed and apologetic as its owner will ever manage—and then it is gone as Carton turns back.

"Down, Evrémonde! Down!" it continues, and a slight smirk comes to his lips. Because his questionable associations with lower classmen like Cruncher and ruffians like Barsad have managed to do some good after all. Because the masses aren't getting their Evrémonde, even if they think they are.

"You're not afraid," the seamstress realizes beside him. "The others are only pretending, but you… It's almost as if you welcomed it." She stares up at him, confused and admiring all at once, with her dark, wide eyes and dark, mussed curls, and she's really rather pretty. Had circumstance allowed for a higher class, an easier life, she might even have been beautiful.

A French professor's daughter, a French doctor's daughter, and now this French little seamstress. He's hopeless. But he already knew that. And it doesn't matter anymore anyway.

"Perhaps I do," he admits thoughtfully. "Perhaps in death I receive something that I never had in life…" Before he can think to continue, the tumbrel comes to a halt. Before he can think to warn her, she turns toward the square just as the guillotine's blade drops. The grisly trophy is held up for display, the body is thrown unceremoniously into another cart, and the women of the front rows, relentlessly knitting, count Two.

The seamstress recoils against him, trembling slightly, even as their own tumbrel is being emptied. "Steady," he murmurs. She nods, grips his hand tighter—but gently, gently, he withdraws and precedes her. She's ushered out roughly, her steps faltering as the guillotine takes its third drink of blood, but he finds her again before she has a chance to fall, guides her to the fringe of the crowd of victims, her back against the platform base.

And so they wait, hand-in-hand, grim lovers before a gruesome priest, waiting to be married.

After a time she looks up at him, pressing his fingers to get his attention. He can see anxiety buried in her eyes, but she endures it formidably. "Thank you," she finally says. "But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I am naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart. Nor should I have been able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might have hope and comfort here today." A small, tremulous smile blooms on her lips, like some rosebud in the dead of winter. "I think you were sent to me by Heaven."

Something lost and forgotten swells in his chest as he looks at her, and his thumb manages to trace the worn skin of the back of her hand. "Or you to me," he murmurs. She stares up at him, a warm and dark realization filling her eyes, parting her lips.

The blade crashes down and she starts, nervously jerking her head around as the women count Ten.

"Keep your eyes upon me, dear child, and mind no other object," he urges.

She swallows, glances up at him. "I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing when I let it go, if they are rapid."

"They will be rapid," he reassures her. If nothing else, there is at least that one virtue in their viciousness. "Fear not!"

In silence, they stand, as the mob whirls around them, a tide of roars, punctuated by the heavy crack of the guillotine and the impassive chants of the knitting-women. Her fingers are callused against his, and he realizes he likes that about her, though he can't fathom why.

Thirteen.

Fourteen.

Fifteen—

"Brave and generous friend," she starts again, suddenly, timidly, trying to keep her voice from shaking, "will you let me ask you one last question? I am very ignorant, and it troubles me—just a little."

"Tell me what it is." He worries that he maybe sounds curt, but the machine behind them counts time as surely as any clock, a razor-sharp hand ticking the moments away.

She seems the type that is naturally shy at heart, but impending death, he knows, is a wonderful impetus for change, and she begins to chatter wantonly. "I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she lives in a farmer's house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she knows nothing of my fate—for I cannot write—and if I could, how should I tell her!" For a moment, tears glaze her eyes, but she catches herself. "It is better as it is," she admits, but doesn't sound entirely sure of herself.

"Yes, yes; better as it is." His voice is soft, comforting, coaxing.

"What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am still thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me so much support, is this: If the Republic really does good to the poor, and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may live a long time: she may even live to be old."

Eighteen. The seamstress gulps, doesn't take her gaze from his.

A kind squeeze of her small hand. "What then, my gentle sister?"

"Do you think—" and her voice breaks, her lips tremble, her fingers convulse around his in a desperate grip, "—that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?"

He shakes his head. "It cannot be, my child; there is no time there, and no trouble there." It even sounds wonderful to him.

She laughs out a sob, the lift of a great burden, tears of relief gathering in the corners of her eyes. "You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant." Another laugh, and she raises her gaze to his again. The guillotine shaves off inhibitions just as well as it does lives, and she asks almost blithely, "Am I to kiss you now? Is the moment come?"

He cannot help but smile and let out a little laugh of his own, because for the first time in so, so long, he feels light. Content with himself. He wonders if the girl in front of him has any inkling of the gift she has given him, but instead looks down at her—her delicate frame, her wide, liquid eyes—and simply answers, "Yes."

She tilts her head up; he bends down. Amidst the relentless crashing of the machine and the chaos of a revolution, they meet.

He can't remember the last time he was kissed by a woman. Perhaps it was a rouge-cheeked tavern girl, far back, after his drinking grew excessive but before he grew numb. Or perhaps further, perhaps it was even the professor's daughter. He can't remember. It doesn't matter. None of his past does anymore.

It isn't passionate, but it's true. It's gentle and warm and good, and he presses her fingers in a silent thank you.

Twenty-one, and they part. The gaolers reach for her thin shoulders, and she lets go of his hand calmly, genuine gratitude and wistful adoration gracing her features.

He thinks he's never seen anything more beautiful.

She ascends. The blade rises, drops, and one more soul is returned home. Twenty-two.

"I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord…"

He feels hands on his own shoulders, propelling him forward. He feels his feet floating up the stairs, his body being placed face-down. The words keep echoing in his head. Kind, and generous, and brave. He knows what he does is right. He knows those words he spoke to Lorry, about age and respect and love, are now a lie. He knows the blessed girl before him wasn't as naïve as she thought she was. And he knows his favorite number—

Twenty-three.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Admittedly my writing style is hardly Dickensian, but hopefully this was still enjoyable for all you classic-literature-loving readers. As much as I love that last scene of the book, there was always something about it, particularly the dialogue, that seemed a little…not lacking exactly, but…awkward, I guess? So I guess this was my attempt to flesh it out a bit and make it not so awkward. (Plus, I'm a sucker for Carton and the wilty seamstress.) I stole a couple lines from the 1935 movie (because I heart it big time), but other than that, I kept the original book dialogue unchanged and intact.


End file.
